handle in life, it was success. He had a big game in front of that scout, so he spent the next few days drinking with buddies, going coon hunting, blowing off school and practice. He showed up at school for the game that Friday night hungover, and the coach told him to get lost. No school, no practice, no game. Especially in his condition. But, being my father, he couldn’t understand consequences like a normal person. Hell, if the University of Kentucky was recruiting him, what could his high school coaches have to teach him? Anyway, he cussed the coach out, and when one of the assistants tried to defuse the situation, my dad punched him. The head coach intervened, and he punched him, too. Needless to say, the basketball dream ended that night. So, according to my dear old dad, sports were for losers. But of course, without basketball to motivate him to attend school, he barely finished his sophomore year. And never bothered showing up for eleventh grade, or anything after that.
“People in our county love basketball, so high school diploma or no, he could rely on his name and helping lead his school to the state tournament his freshman year to get him in the door for jobs. But his attitude, temper, and drinking insured that none of them ever lasted very long.
“When I was a young kid, I was a huge fan of the Cincinnati Reds. It was the major league team closest to my Podunk town, and in 1990 they were on fire. They went wire to wire that year, meaning they started the season in first place and stayed there the entire season.
“I used to have a little transistor radio I’d sneak under my pillow to listen to all the night games. Even when the team was on the west coast and games didn’t begin until ten o’clock or later. Their announcers were Marty and Joe, Joe being Joe Nuxhall, who’d pitched for the Reds a million years ago. The sweetest sound I ever heard was Joe’s tagline at the end of every broadcast. “This is the old lefthander, rounding third and heading for home. Good night, everybody.”
Nolan was lost in melancholy, his eyes focused on something nobody but him could see, something off in the distance. Anybody else talking at length about a baseball team from twenty-five years ago would have put me to sleep. Nolan had me on the edge of my seat.
“Anyway, late in the season one of my best friends, Russ, had a birthday. For his birthday, he got tickets to a Reds game. Against the Dodgers, which was a huge deal because the Dodgers were in second place almost all year. So Russ got to invite a friend along, and he invited me. He brought my ticket over and you’d have thought we had golden tickets from Willy Wonka. We even got t-shirts with our favorite players on them, Chris Sabo for him, Barry Larkin for me. It was all we talked about for weeks. I put that ticket in my special desk drawer and pulled it out every morning just to stare at it.
“His grandparents were supposed to take us to Cincinnati for the game. Neither Russ nor I had ever been to a Major League game, and his grandad had been telling us all these stories, about how green the grass was at Riverfront Stadium, even though it turns out it was artificial turf, but what does a twelve-year-old know? And how huge the hot dogs were, how they had these little ice cream sundaes served in replica batter’s helmets. I mean he had us all sorts of pumped up. I don’t remember sleeping a wink for three days before we were supposed to go.
“So the big day arrived and I got up, put on my Barry Larkin shirt for what was probably the twentieth straight day, and went downstairs. My mom was already gone, she cut and colored hair sometimes, so she was probably at somebody’s house doing that, and my dad was asleep on the couch. I poured myself some cereal and tried to be quiet to avoid waking him up, but when I started eating it, I guess I slurped the milk a little too loud. He woke up in a rage. Told me I was a noisy little shit with no respect.
“People in our county love basketball, so high school diploma or no, he could rely on his name and helping lead his school to the state tournament his freshman year to get him in the door for jobs. But his attitude, temper, and drinking insured that none of them ever lasted very long.
“When I was a young kid, I was a huge fan of the Cincinnati Reds. It was the major league team closest to my Podunk town, and in 1990 they were on fire. They went wire to wire that year, meaning they started the season in first place and stayed there the entire season.
“I used to have a little transistor radio I’d sneak under my pillow to listen to all the night games. Even when the team was on the west coast and games didn’t begin until ten o’clock or later. Their announcers were Marty and Joe, Joe being Joe Nuxhall, who’d pitched for the Reds a million years ago. The sweetest sound I ever heard was Joe’s tagline at the end of every broadcast. “This is the old lefthander, rounding third and heading for home. Good night, everybody.”
Nolan was lost in melancholy, his eyes focused on something nobody but him could see, something off in the distance. Anybody else talking at length about a baseball team from twenty-five years ago would have put me to sleep. Nolan had me on the edge of my seat.
“Anyway, late in the season one of my best friends, Russ, had a birthday. For his birthday, he got tickets to a Reds game. Against the Dodgers, which was a huge deal because the Dodgers were in second place almost all year. So Russ got to invite a friend along, and he invited me. He brought my ticket over and you’d have thought we had golden tickets from Willy Wonka. We even got t-shirts with our favorite players on them, Chris Sabo for him, Barry Larkin for me. It was all we talked about for weeks. I put that ticket in my special desk drawer and pulled it out every morning just to stare at it.
“His grandparents were supposed to take us to Cincinnati for the game. Neither Russ nor I had ever been to a Major League game, and his grandad had been telling us all these stories, about how green the grass was at Riverfront Stadium, even though it turns out it was artificial turf, but what does a twelve-year-old know? And how huge the hot dogs were, how they had these little ice cream sundaes served in replica batter’s helmets. I mean he had us all sorts of pumped up. I don’t remember sleeping a wink for three days before we were supposed to go.
“So the big day arrived and I got up, put on my Barry Larkin shirt for what was probably the twentieth straight day, and went downstairs. My mom was already gone, she cut and colored hair sometimes, so she was probably at somebody’s house doing that, and my dad was asleep on the couch. I poured myself some cereal and tried to be quiet to avoid waking him up, but when I started eating it, I guess I slurped the milk a little too loud. He woke up in a rage. Told me I was a noisy little shit with no respect.
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